Nearly a year after Donna Deitz’s and Kevin Loftin’s deaths, Belmont Police are revising the policy for when officers should give chase and how to operate vehicle checkpoints.

Deitz, 60, and Loftin, 56, died Feb. 22, 2012, after Lester Saunders Norman Jr. collided with the car carrying Loftin and Deitz as the two were making their way back from Ash Wednesday services at a Charlotte church. Norman drove through a police checkpoint, fled from police, ran through red light and struck the vehicle at the intersection of Park Street and Wilkinson Boulevard.

Norman pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, speeding to elude arrest causing death and reckless driving in a plea deal. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Belmont Police Chief Charlie Franklin said the clarifications weren’t made in response to the tragedy. The proposed revisions should give officers more guidance when making the call of whether to pursue a vehicle and provides more oversight on how traffic checkpoints are conducted, he said.

Franklin maintains that police pursued Norman because he tried to run over an officer when running through the checkpoint.

The chase

Video from the dashboard of one patrol car shows Norman’s vehicle going through the checkpoint, but the angle of the camera doesn’t clearly show what happened. The policy revisions will prevent the kind of speculation that surrounds the Norman case by having three patrol cars videotaping checkpoints. One of those patrol cars should be positioned so the actions of officers and drivers are recorded, providing electronic proof.

The revisions would provide direction and guidelines for officers, Franklin said. A policy can’t include everything that may happen, he said.

“When you have a pursuit, you have to take the totality of the event,” Franklin said Monday at a meeting to go over the revisions with members of Belmont City Council’s public safety committee. “Chases are dangerous. You just have to be cautious.”

Police plan to move forward with the policy if members of the committee — Councilmen Bill Toole, Charlie Flowers and Ron Foulk — don’t voice any objections or seek major changes by Friday.

Franklin doesn’t need City Council approval to make changes, he said. Franklin plans to make the proposed policy official March 1, giving him enough time to educate officers on the revisions.

If Belmont Police implement this policy, it will be one of the tightest chase policies in Gaston County, Franklin said.

Tucker, however, is not satisfied.

Alternate proposal

“I noticed them taking a little more care to specify which pursuits would be allowed, but I noticed there would be a lot of wiggle room,” Tucker said.

Human life is put at risk whenever there’s a chase, so Tucker said she couldn’t justify a police pursuit unless another life is threatened.

“It’s not as if police are without other sources to find criminals. There are means of finding people, especially if you get the license plate,” Tucker said. “I dispute the notion that your only chance to catch them is when you see them make a traffic violation.”

Tucker presented the police department and public safety committee with her own version of vehicle pursuit policy that’s based on a similar policy in Orlando, Fla. That proposed policy takes a tougher stance on when to give chase.

“It must be so important to apprehend the suspect that officers are justified in placing an innocent third party at risk of losing their life and/or property,” Tucker’s proposed policy states.

Tucker wants a clearly written policy with very limited reasons — only when an officer is protecting life — for allowing a chase. She wants careful, thorough and renewed training so officers have a lot of background when making those split decisions. She wants careful supervision before, during and after a chase and accountability if mistakes are made.

Tucker isn’t sure that checkpoints are the best way to catch criminals. But if police are going to set up checkpoints, she said they should set them up so police can get the information about people and stop them with stop sticks rather than pursuing.

“Think about it. How does a police pursuit end?” Tucker asked. “Are they assuming they will chase until this highly panicked person — who is being made more panicked by the second as he sees the blue lights get closer and closer and the sirens blaring and as he tries to maneuver around the traffic on a crowded interstate highway — are they assuming that this panicked person will suddenly say ‘What am I doing? My bad. I better pull over’ on the interstate. That’s just not logical. Police pursuits end in crashes very often.”

Tucker wants Belmont Police to release its internal investigation that Franklin said determined officers did nothing wrong in this incident. Franklin said he can’t release those documents because they contain personnel information and statements from witnesses that shouldn’t be made public. Franklin said he’s offered to go over the internal reports with Tucker privately.

‘You can’t make everyone happy’

Tucker wants more time for the public to weigh in on the policy changes. Franklin said he’s fine with getting more public input and has an open door policy where anyone can talk to him about their concerns.

“The problem with that is you can’t make everyone happy,” Franklin said. “I feel like it’s a solid policy. You can’t have a no chase policy.”

Criminals know when cities have a no chase policy, Franklin said, and it does make a difference.

Franklin said he sympathizes with Tucker over the loss of her loved one, but he has no reason to believe officers lied about what happened leading up to last year’s chase. Revising the checkpoint policy to make sure officers get clear footage will help with some, but not all questions when incidents occur.

“A video is not going to catch everything,” Franklin said. “I have no doubt what happened that night. The officers had no reason to lie about that.”

Police still would have pursued the vehicle even under the revised policies, Franklin said.

Tucker doesn’t think that the fact that an officer has to move from the path of a fleeing vehicle should constitute a criminal offense worthy of a chase.

“If an officer positions himself in the path of a driver and the driver starts to flee, that’s officer error,” Tucker said. “The people who flee are not rational. They’re not thinking about my safety or your safety or the safety of officers….But isn’t it incumbent on the police to not act in the same manner? They’re supposed to be the grown ups.”

Tucker believes that the crash that killed her sister wouldn’t have happened if officers hadn’t given chase.

“Norman would not have driven like that if he had not been pursued,” Tucker said. “I can’t bring them back. That’s very true. But I want to prevent other people from being killed.”

Tucker said she could go on with her life, but Belmont is her hometown, the home of her father who dedicated 21 years on City Council and the home of Loftin, who served as mayor to make Belmont a better place.

“So I feel it’s my responsibility to do this,” Tucker said.

The loss of Deitz and Loftin was a tragedy, Franklin said. He knew both personally. Franklin said that even with precautions and policies, bad things can still happen.

“The Belmont Police had nothing to do with what Mr. Norman done. He chose that. He was in control of that situation, as they are when they take off from a checkpoint or when they’re attempting to be stopped. That person driving the vehicle is in control,” Franklin said. “Sometimes officers are between a rock and a hard place. You know, if you do chase and something happens, then everybody says, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have chased.’ Then if you don’t chase and something happens, then they say, ‘Well, why didn’t the police chase them?’”

You can reach reporter Amanda Memrick at 704-869-18329 or follow @AmandaMemrick on Twitter.

Changing policies

Under Belmont Police’s proposed policy, officers would be justified to pursue a vehicle if officers believe the suspect attempted or committed the following actions before a pursuit:

- Murder

- Rape

- Kidnapping

- Arson

- Robbery with a dangerous weapon or common law robbery

- Felonious assault

- Committed a crime using a deadly weapon

- Is wanted on charges listed above

Changes to the traffic checkpoint policy include:

- Requiring an officer holding the rank of lieutenant or higher to authorize checkpoints

- A minimum of three officers with marked police cars must be available for a checkpoint

- A field supervisor with the rank of sergeant or above must be assigned to all checkpoint operations and be present to supervise the checkpoint

- All patrol vehicles assigned to the checkpoint must have a working video camera. Cameras must be positioned to monitor the activities of the officer and the motorists going through the check point

Source: Belmont Police

Belmont checkpoints and chases

Here are the number of checkpoints and chases conducted by Belmont Police over the past five years